Nashville, Tennessee (CNN) — Chris Christie swept into Tennessee on Friday and did all the things that Chris Christie does best.

He raised a barrel full of money, for the Republican Governors Association and the Tennessee GOP. A consummate political performer, he backslapped his way through two fawning campaign crowds, one in Memphis and one in Nashville, posing for pictures and obliging starstruck Republicans who complimented him on his weight loss.

And of course, he picked a fight — this time with Tennessee’s tea party.

“We don't need people in Washington who stand for divisiveness, so let's not send anybody like that up there,” the New Jersey governor said at a re-election campaign event for Sen. Lamar Alexander, who faces an upstart conservative primary opponent this year. “Let's not start getting dumb.”

The admonishment drew a rebuke from Alexander’s tea party foe, state Rep. Joe Carr, who lashed out at Christie’s “dumb governance” and mocked New Jersey’s multiple credit downgrades and the George Washington Bridge scandal that roiled Trenton earlier this year.

But Carr, like many tea party candidates in the establishment-strikes-back election season of 2014, was punching up. Christie, the likely presidential candidate, was booked as the headline speaker the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statesmen’s Dinner in Nashville on Friday night. Alexander, too, basked in the glow of the crowd. Carr, meanwhile, sat quietly at a table in the audience. He departed right after Christie’s speech.

Christie backed off the “dumb” language in his remarks Friday, which raised more than $700,000 for the state Republican party and attracted more than 1,700 supporters to the Music City Center in downtown Nashville. But he tapped into now well-worn Christie themes of bipartisanship and problem-solving, delivering a plea for compromise in Washington, obliquely attacking tea party ideologues, and pointing to his work with Democrats in New Jersey as a model for the nation.

“We can compromise and we should,” he said. “But we should only comprise from a position of strength, when people know what we stand for and we don’t.” Christie, though, revealed little about what he stands for in terms of policy — instead training his rhetoric on the failures of Washington politicians.

He fired off a salvo against do-nothing political leaders who “put out press releases, go on cable television, bicker with each other and get nothing done.” President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats were certainly a target. But conservative hard-liners in Congress were implicitly in Christie’s cross-hairs as well.

“Who is watching the mess in Washington, D.C., created by both parties, and is looking at that and saying, ‘Hey let’s do that, let’s give that a try!,’” Christie said. “‘Let’s close down the government and not make it work for the people! Let’s not even speak to each other about the issues that are important! Let’s not reform a tax system that’s choking off economic growth! Let’s not have an energy policy that can free us geopolitically and economically for a new era of North American dominance in the world!’” Nobody, he answered.

“I don’t know when compromise became capitulation, but that’s what people in Washington, D.C. seem to think,” he said. “I don’t know when it became wrong to talk to the people on the either side, to respect them and become their friends.”

Christie pointed to Tennessee’s two Republican senators — Alexander and Bob Corker, a pair of occasional deal-makers who preceded him in the program — as “an example in the Senate for what our country needs to be doing.” (He did not extend the praise to several conservative House Republicans from Tennessee, including Marsha Blackburn and Chuck Fleischmann, who came on stage later.)

Christie’s three-stop tour of Tennessee — he also showed up at a Nashville barbecue restaurant with Gov. Bill Haslam, up for re-election this year — was his first public foray into the American South as a potential White House contender. At the Memphis event Friday morning, Christie conceded that his political sway in the region was probably limited.

A reporter asked him why he wasn’t in nearby Mississippi endorsing Sen. Thad Cochran, another establishment-backed incumbent with a tea party fight on his hands. "To tell you the truth I don't know if an endorsement from the governor of New Jersey would help anyone of them," Christie responded.

Later, in Memphis, a reporter asked Christie how a perceived moderate from the northeast would fare in Tennessee — a state that boasts thriving urban centers but still maintains a culturally conservative bent. “I don’t worry about those things,” he said. “I think people judge by who you are and what you’ve done.”

Christie still radiated the kind of star power that elevated him to national prominence after his first election in 2009. He was mobbed as he worked his way through Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant alongside Haslam, at one point jovially crossing paths with a boozy, cowboy-hat-wearing bachelorette party. He fielded praise about his weight loss, posed for pictures, and welcomed offers from out-of-state tourists to come visit their states.

The governor was greeted with a respectful, but not passionate, standing ovation as he strode onto the stage at the Statesmen’s Dinner. His speech, in which he called himself a “Republican conservative governor,” drew the third largest audience in the dinner’s history, behind headliners Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1997. Earlier in the day, he held a batch of fundraising meetings that raised $500,000 for the Republican Governors Association, the political group he chairs.

He was also on the receiving end of kind words from Corker, Alexander, Tennessee GOP Chairman Chris Devaney and Haslam, who vouched for Christie’s character as a family man.

“I have gotten to know him as a governor,” Haslam told the audience. “He has truly has become a friend.”

soundoff(60 Responses)

Please pass the popcorn- very entertaining to see Tea Party / GOP skirmishes. Even with weight loss Christie can throw his weight around. Important message he carries "Stop the Divisiveness" will unite GOP to fight back Tea Party radicals.

As a Republican, I did not buy Christie's spin
on the Fort Lee mess, which lasted 4 days and was on ALL the local news in NJ and NYC. How could he have not have heard or been alerted and not taken action then and there-unless politics played a big role.

He can rant about Washington, but his own State, like others in that region, are run by political machines far worse.

June 1, 2014 12:23 pm at 12:23 pm |

Tony D

Tony from Oakland
Government debt is Federal deficit. And presently, the deficit went down from $1.4 trillion in FY2009 to $648 billion in FY2013. Evidently......the Government is spending less.
--

Are you nuts? It went down because of higher taxes. Obamacare had 21 new taxes!

June 1, 2014 01:41 pm at 1:41 pm |

Stephen Colbert

A Republican whose message isn't just "anti-Obama"? What is this world coming to?

June 1, 2014 01:57 pm at 1:57 pm |

S. B. Stein

I don't think that Christie can really criticize anyone given his foolish ideological nature. If he can't see the need to raise the income tax on the highest earners and the gasoline tax to maintain the roads, then he can't see what needs to get done.

June 1, 2014 03:26 pm at 3:26 pm |

Hypocrite Conservatrads

A fat man yelling at people to be more united, funny and Ironic.

The Mound of Messiah strikes again.

June 1, 2014 04:51 pm at 4:51 pm |

Paolo Zizzo

Boy do I get steamed when I keep hearing about this bridge. These are probably the same people who don’t mind it when people die on Obama watching. That’s right – DEAD. Bleeding. Broken. In pieces. Dead. He didn’t lift a finger and was off living it up the good life on our dime, with his wife taking a whole plane by herself around the world that would have fund the White House Tours for years to come, but these same dimwits cannot stop themselves to go on and on about a bridge. Can you even look at yourself in the mirror without laughing at how idiotic you look right now?

June 1, 2014 06:00 pm at 6:00 pm |

Nameprophetic justice

The country has terminal cancer and its citizens are in denial. Perverts and reprobates have been put into leadership roles by an ignorant electorate and the country will reap what it sows.

Did he actually say "compromise with the democrats" in NJ? Because he didn't hold up his end of the so called compromise at all ..that's not compromise at all, it's a bold face lie to get what you want...

June 1, 2014 09:33 pm at 9:33 pm |

Mary

Another spineless Rino who is more concerned with his rich corporate buddies than America.